Audience engagement might just sound like a modern buzz phrase, but it’s a practical concept that event organisers have understood and encouraged since time immemorial. Booing, hissing, cheering, and clapping to express opinions have always been a part of the entertainment experience – it’s simply that today’s immersive experience events are a bit more sophisticated (well, most of the time).
While social distancing rules and guidelines have impacted how events happen, COVID-19 restrictions have also placed increased importance on (safe) audience engagement through connection and social interaction. Whether your event is in-person, hybrid, or online, there’s a huge range of tools to enable audience interactions and help you create the best experience for your attendees.
What’s more, most of them don’t require investing in expensive hardware. Attendees already have the technology required in their pockets: their smartphones and tablets. You may have already used one or more of the most popular audience engagement tools, such as Mailchimp or HubSpot. With so many available, we thought the topic deserved to be properly unpacked.
1. Mentimeter
Mentimeter is a mobile voting app that lets you view audience engagement results live with real-time graphs and charts. Using audience participation software that can handle over 30,000 votes per minute, it can work for both small and big events. The app provides many different question/response formats such as multiple-choice, open-ended, rating scale, and word clouds. Plus, you can even style it with your branding!
2. Glisser
Glisser lets presenters share slides to the audience’s mobile devices during their presentation. In turn, audience members can like, comment on, or share those slides to their own social networks. Attendees can also download the slides for later reference or to share with colleagues back at the office. It means there’s no need for printed handouts, so you can provide extra convenience for attendees and host a more eco-friendly event while you’re at it.
3. Buzzmaster
Buzzmaster is an audience interaction app with a difference. It comes with “BuzzMasters” – real people who moderate the audience responses in real-time. The BuzzMasters are all journalists or experienced event managers, who sort through the data to curate the most interesting comments and find your visitors’ best stories. They can also hit the audience with new, unexpected questions, helping to facilitate the session and create a buzz.
4. Crowd Mics
Crowd Mics is an app that turns the audience’s phones into wireless microphones. The app works in conjunction with an “ATOM” box that plugs into the venue’s wired network and sound system. Meanwhile, the moderator uses an iPad app interface to control who speaks. Crowd Mics also has comment and polling functions.
5. Catchbox
Unlike many of the other tools on our list, Catchbox isn’t an app, but a physical microphone. It’s no ordinary microphone, however. It’s the world’s first throwable (you read it right) wireless microphone. When someone has a question, you simply throw them the Catchbox, engaging participants in a fun, interactive game of catch.
6. Live Insights
Live Insights is a mobile polling and feedback app by QuickMobile that lets the audience vote, rate, or answer multiple-choice questions from their phones. As well as being able to create questions ahead of time, presenters can launch a poll on the fly, facilitating a truly interactive event and enabling them to tailor their presentations according to the audiences’ response.
7. Angage
Rather than asking participants to use their mobile phones, the Angage audience response system equips them with individual voting keypads – “clickers” – making the process easier for a less tech-savvy crowd. The easy-to-use keypads enable participants to respond to multiple-choice questions by selecting letters or numbers. The responses can be displayed in real time, making it easy to gather sentiment.
8. Engagenow
Engagenow lets you design attractive-looking polls and quizzes that empower the audience to interact with the big screen during an event. It can also be used to crowdsource questions or open up chat around the event to spark debate and connect audience members with each other.
9. eventScribe
The eventScribe mobile event app has a plethora of functions, including giving participants the ability to ask questions, post comments, and connect with each other on a private social networking platform. Another interesting feature allows attendees to access presentation slides that they can annotate – the best bit is they can then share their notes with other attendees, making for a more collaborative session.
10. Boomset
The Boomset event app provides easy two-way integration with Eventbrite and can help make your event more meaningful for your attendees with tools such as a virtual exhibitor area, live chat, and one-to-one video calls. Boomset features include automated and secure entry management with RFID, facial recognition, and on-demand colour badge printing.
11. Loquiz
Games are a great way to engage an audience. Loquiz lets organisers easily set up a variety of interactive games and quizzes with an integrated question library. You can also use it to stage interactive event ideas, such as bespoke treasure hunts, using photos or written clues to guide players. The app, which an appointed team leader operates on a tablet, uses GPS for outdoor positioning and a special clue system for indoor question mapping. It’s suitable for events of all sizes.
Engagement and beyond
Engaging event attendees is integral to holding their attention. It can also make a big difference to their satisfaction levels – if an attendee has been actively involved in your event they’re far more likely to feel it was worthwhile. Due to the pandemic hybrid events have become a new norm, and present a great opportunity for you to grow your audience to include both in-person and virtual attendees. See how Eventbrite’s full suite of event tools can help you facilitate audience engagement and participation so that the atmosphere is buzzing at your next event.
